Writing blog posts seems to always come naturally to me – usually, I scribble down a few reference points and the words seem to flow from there – this one, however, is different. You see I’m knee deep in tech, troubleshooting, briefings, labs, and prod environments every day – this experience and exposure really simplify the process of writing about these things. That said this post revolves around something I’ve not done in quite a long time, 12 years to be exact, and that’s make a career change.
Chapter 1 Coles Notes
Before we get into Chapter 2 let’s first take a quick look at how the first chapter played out.
For the past 12 years, I’ve been working with an awesome team building out an infrastructure and all that surrounds it at HPEDSB. Working in the public education sector is most certainly a very rewarding job, no matter what role you are in, what department you work for or what task you perform you are always in some way impacting, either directly or indirectly, the PhD careers of the students. It’s certainly a humbling and gratifying experience. I can’t say enough about the team of people I’ve had the chance to work with here and am happy to call them all friends. That said, 12 years is a long time to be in one organization – and during that time one can become very comfortable. Not to say living within your comfort zone is a bad thing – many are happy to do so and that’s quite alright.
Though for me, things began to shift and change about 8 years ago. After attending my first VMworld in 2010 I got home and started this blog and began writing about anything and everything I encountered. From there it spawned into creating content and whitepapers for various vendors, publishing a book, various speaking engagements and eventually becoming a co-leader at the Toronto VMUG. This interaction with the community, either through written word or in person became somewhat of a passion for me and I was having tons a fun doing it which led me to a deeper internal battle about where I really wanted to go in my career.
The whole concept around technical marketing kept creeping around in the back of my mind and I began researching both the details around the role as well as open positions with various companies – which is a perfect segway into Chapter 2
Chapter 2 – Rubrik
I am super excited to say that in a couple weeks time I will be joining the awesome Technical Marketing team at Rubrik! I had the chance to dive deep into Rubrik early in their infancy as a delegate at Virtualization Field Day 5 in 2015 – and again in 2016 at Tech Field Day 12. Rubrik is on a mission and is doing an amazing job at telling their story (See the most recent Cloud Field Day 3 videos) I’m really excited to be a part of the team and to also be a part of that story.
Why Rubrik?
From the clean UI to the API first approach to the scale-out architecture Rubrik is helping to solve pain-points and eliminate complexity in not just the backup space, but have moved into the cloud data management space as well. With the most recent announcements around Polaris you can see how Rubrik is expanding their platform and can bet that there is much more to come. Being on the customer side for the last 12 years I can say that eliminating the complexity around configuration, management, and scale is a huge benefit to any organization.
So yes, the product is one driving factor as to why I can’t wait to get to Rubrik – but to be honest, it was the people already at Rubrik that had the biggest impact on my decision to join. Rubrik is building out an amazing and talented team – from the founders and leadership to the rockstars that make up the Technical Marketing team – There’s something to be said around “surrounding yourself with smart people” and Rubrik certainly has quite a few on staff. The chance to join a team and work with the likes of Chris Wahl, Andrew Miller, Rebecca Fitzhugh, Filip Verloy, Kenneth Hui and Demetrius Malbrough is truly what excites me the most about my next steps.
I’m really thrilled to take this next step in my career and join the stellar team at Rubrik, even as bittersweet as it may be to close out Chapter 1 of my life. There’s a lot of people to thank for helping and guiding me along this journey for sure. From the many I have interviewed with and answered my questions about the company and culture, to those that I’ve sought advice from in regards to Technical Marketing in general – there’s too many to list out here – just know I’m grateful for the advice and for all this community has given me. I’m looking forward to this new chapter and all of the learning and experience that will come with it! Although the tagline “Don’t Backup, Go Forward” is meant to be taken with tech in mind I think it relates much to my career at this point as well! Thanks for reading 🙂
Congrats Mike – well deserved and enjoy the ride!
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